There are no items in your cart
Add More
Add More
| Item Details | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|
By Wesley Newton Published on: Wed May 11, 2022
Playing the drums from picking up your very first drum stick to perfecting the classic two-time beat to the Waltz groove is like using your creativity in the right direction. Let’s do a recap of everything we have learnt in this blog post.
Accomplished drummer and a Grade 8 in Drums with Distinction from Trinity College of Music, your teacher brings 2 decades of professional experience. He has played with iconic bands such as Groovemeister and Blushing Satellite at prestigious music festivals across the country and internationally.
Learning and experimenting with the unlimited possibilities of a drum kit is nothing short of amazing. In this last and final blog post, we do a recap of what we have learnt from mastering rudiments, perfecting eighth and sixteenth note grooves to playing the disco beat.
In this final episode, we do a revision or a recap of what we have learnt so far. But before that, let’s keep in mind that although reading sheet music, understanding drum theory and practising on your own drum kit is important, listening and playing along to your favourite songs can make a huge difference.
Some of the world’s top drummers are less on reading music but more on watching drummers hone their craft. On the other hand, listening to music can help you understand your growth as a drummer. In drums, your ears are an extremely powerful tool. Watching drummers perform live can help you understand the importance of rudiments and the way grooves and fills are orchestrated in different ways.
Coming back to fundamentals, we learnt the impact and the beauty of playing drums. Next, we moved on to identifying the different parts of the drum kit – the hi-hat, snare drum, kick drum, the ride cymbal, crash cymbal, hi-tom, mid-tom and the floor tom.
In the following blog posts, we experimented with rudiments – single strokes, double strokes and single paradiddles – the foundation of playing drums. Once we got better at mastering the basics, we moved on to playing the quarter note (1-2), eighth note (1-&-2-&-3-&-4-&) and sixteenth note grooves (1-e-&-a-2-e-&-a-3-e-&-a-4-e-&-a).
Moving on, we learnt the classic two-time groove (hi-hat and kick drum on count 1 and hi-hat and snare drum on count 2 in quarter notes) and the Waltz beat (hi-hat and kick drum on count 1 followed by hi-hat and snare drum on counts 2 and 3). Then, the best kick drum pattern – four on the floor (adding a kick drum to all quarter note positions). We also tried to apply the four-on-the-floor groove to 8th notes and 16th notes.
We then practised triplets, that are 3 notes spread equally over an entire bar (1-trip-let-2-trip-let-3-trip-let-4-trip-let). Once we got familiar with a triplet groove, we added the same to a fill (snare drum leading with our right hand, hi-tom leading with our left hand, mid-tom leading with the right hand, and floor tom leading with the left hand). We also learnt how to end a groove and a fill with the crash on count 1 of the following bar.
Next, we moved on to the shuffle groove. Yes, skipping the “trip” in 1-trip-let-2-trip-let-3-trip-let-4-trip-let. Once we got comfortable playing the shuffle groove on the hi-hat, kick drum on counts 1 and 3 and snare drum on counts 2 and 4, we moved on to playing a bar of the shuffle groove and following that up with the triplet beat as a fill and finally ending the fill with the crash on count 1 of the following bar.
We also learnt how to use rudiments (single strokes, double strokes and paradiddles) as fills after playing an eighth note groove. In the following blog posts, we learnt the concept of the cross-stick, playing the ride, alternating between the ride and the bell in 8th notes and the foot technique (heel down and heel up technique).
We then moved to accents (notes that are usually louder than others). Next, we added accents to alternate counts in a sixteenth note beat (1, e, & and a). The next blog post focused on playing 16th notes on the hi-hat, learning how to play the open hi-hat with our left foot while maintaining an eighth note groove on the ride, snare drum and the kick drum.
We also learnt about flams (delayed notes) on the snare drum, hi-tom, mid-tom and the floor tom. Moving ahead, we learnt to apply the concept of flams on fills (flam on 1 followed by a kick on & of 1-2-3-4). We learnt about drags, which are a combination of two quick 16th notes that involves an accented note. Mixing flams and drags is also something we practiced in 16th notes.
In the next blog post, we learnt about ghost notes and grace notes and played a groove using both of them. To cap it all off, we learnt the popular disco beat in 8th and broken 16th notes.
Here we are looking at you progress remarkably well as a drummer. Keep practising, get your fundamentals (rudiments and time values) right and keep expressing yourself on the kit. Go back to the previous blog posts to catch any details you may have missed.
Launch your Graphy